It is highly unfortunate that evacuation of facilities intended for patient care can often lead to the most disastrous consequences. For example, in the July/August 1990 issue of Fire Journal, on page 34, there is story describing a 1989 fire at the Hillhaven Rehabilitation and Convalescent Center in Norfolk, Va. which killed 12 patients and injured or forced the relocation of almost 100 others. The nursing home in which the fire occurred was a four-story, fire-resistive building constructed in the late 1960s. There were 161 patients in the facility at the time, and most of them were elderly and nonambulatory. According to one of the firefighters on the scene, problems with evacuation were exacerbated by the fact that residents had to be carried down stairwells on blankets and in regular chairs. Many of the patients were also hooked up to various medical equipment, which further hampered the evacuation effort. Indeed, 9 of the 12 patients who died, age 65 to 97, resided on the second floor of the building. There are numerous other reports of such unfortunate incidents, including a recent fire at the Petersburg Hotel in Petersburg, Va. which broke out on New Year's Eve on the fourth floor. About 25 people were evacuated from the fourth floor and from the two floors above, but four people lost their lives as a result of the fire.
What is needed is an efficient mechanism for evacuating individuals from these and other facilities, but an ideal implementation presents numerous conflicting requirements. On the one hand, the arrangement must be sturdy and reliable, but since it may rarely, hopefully never, be called upon for use, great expense is unwarranted. Additionally, the solution must be sophisticated enough to maximize the comfort of an individual being transported, including patients with IVs and other medical devices and instrumentation. However, the end product and method of use must not be so sophisticated that a non-skilled operator would not readily realize what to do, especially during an emergency situation.
Solutions to this problem range from harnesses and hoists, only some of which are suitable to the nonambulatory patient, to emergency stretcher systems and stair chairs, which tend to be complex and difficult for the uninitiated to operate. U.S. Pat. Nos. 616,282; 3,701,395; 4,688,279; 5,077,844 and 5,193,233 provide an introduction to some of the solutions disclosed.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,179,746 to Rogers teaches an emergency stretcher having particular utility in stairwell situations. Essentially, this apparatus resembles a hand truck in the form of a rigid frame including an articulated handle at its proximal end, and a set of wheels at its distal end. The frame further includes a pair of rails on its underside, whereby, when a staircase is reached, the frame may be articulated to be parallel to the incline defined by the staircase, with the rails then being used to glide on the edges of the stairs, thereby avoiding the bumpy ride inherent with the use of wheels.
While the device of Rogers should provide a relatively smooth transport, the approach presents certain disadvantages. For one, the stretcher is relatively complex and apparently expensive, precluding the use of numerous such stretchers supplied in stairwells only to remain idle for long periods of time. Additionally, the apparatus is somewhat sophisticated in the sense that its intended operation may not be obvious to someone exposed to the device for the first time. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, since the stretcher is held from above with respect to a staircase, it may be impossible for a lighter-weight or weaker individual to guide someone down the stairs, risking an uncontrolled, runaway situation, potentially causing greater harm to the individual being transported. Overlooked by the prior art, then, is an efficient and relatively simple evacuation system, particularly for use in stairwells, based upon a stretcher design which is efficient yet inexpensively produced, and a way to use the stretcher by anyone, regardless of physical ability.